As Egypts domestic Islamist insurgency was winding down by
the second half of the 1990s, the Egyptian government turned its attention to
those who had fled abroad. The Egyptian government policy in the mid-1990s was
to become the template for treatment of such militants for the next decade,
including after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. From the beginning, this response has featured efforts to have suspects returned to Egypt in secret, without regard for existing judicial mechanisms, the incommunicado
detention of suspects upon their return, and subsequent reports that the
suspect was tortured, or in some cases had died in detention.

Beginning in the early 1990s, a small group of Muslims began
to trickle into the former Yugoslavia to assist their Bosnian Muslim
co-religionists, and to fight against the Serbs in the ongoing civil war. The U.S. government took note of these developments. According to Richard Clarke, then the head
of counter-terrorism efforts in the National Security Council, Washington demanded that the Bosnian government expel the militants. Short of fighters and
in the midst of a bloody civil war, the Bosnian government was apparently
reluctant to do so.61

Increasingly concerned about the presence of Islamist
militants from Arab countries taking up arms in the former Yugoslavia, the U.S. government took action. In 1995, the U.S. orchestrated the capture of Gama`a
leader Tal`at Fuad Qassim, also known as Abu Talal al-Qasimi. At the time of
his abduction, Qassim was living in exile in Denmark, where he had been granted
political asylum. Qassim was thirty-eight at the time of his abduction in Croatia in September 1995; he had been traveling to Bosnia to write about the conflict there. The
Croatian foreign ministry told his wife, Amani Faruq, that Qassim had been
expelled for violating Croatian residency laws.62

Richard Clarke has written that the decision by the U.S. government to take Tal`at Fuad Qassim into custody in 1995 was stirred by a recognition within
the Clinton administration of the seriousness of the threat posed by international
terrorism. Clarke refers to Qassims capture as a disappearance.63 Clarke also
states that, unbeknownst to the U.S. government at the time, Qassim and other
foreign Muslims fighting in Bosnia were part of al-Qaeda.64

Before his forced transfer to Egypt, Qassim was allegedly
questioned aboard a U.S. navy vessel and the handover to Egypt took place in the middle of the Adriatic Sea.65
Qassims case is the first known rendition by the U.S. government to a third
country with a record of torture.

The Qassim case marked a first of sorts for the Egyptian
government as well. Its handling of the Qassim case  complete disappearance,
refusing to allow any access to the individual, either by his family or his
lawyers  would be repeated many times in the years to come. After his return,
the Egyptian government refused to answer questions about his whereabouts, and
denied his attorney, Muntassir al-Zayyat, access to him:

I didnt seem him. I dont think that anyone managed to
see him, except for security of course. And those who carried out the
execution...We heard about [his abduction] as soon as he was kidnapped. But we
didnt know where he was.66

In what would become standard procedure for renditions to Egypt, the Egyptian government also refused to release any information on Qassims case:

Yes, we did present an official request. We also
presented a request to the prosecutor and the ministry of interior. We asked
for information about his arrest, and we asked for access, but as usual we
didnt receive any reply.67

Because Qassim had already been tried and convicted in
absentia by a military tribunal in 1992, he was not retried after his
return to Egypt. Instead, the death sentence that he received after that trial
was apparently carried out. He is believed to have been executed by the
Egyptian government.68

After word of his death in custody leaked out, the Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights asked the Egyptian government to at least confirm
his death. According to Hafez Abu Saeda, the secretary-general of EOHR:

We asked the government to tell us what happened, to
answer whether or not he had been tortured to death. We had received
information that he had died in custody. They never responded.69

In 1998 the U.S. government moved against a group of alleged
militants living in Tirana, Albania. The Albanian secret police, in cooperation
with the CIA, monitored the group for several years and observed members
carrying out various low-level criminal activities, such as counterfeiting and
the production of fake passports and visas.70 They also took careful note as the men
engaged in activities that seemed to be in preparation for possible armed
attacks, such as the casing of the U.S. embassy in Tirana. The local cell kept
up regular contact with other exile militants in Yemen and elsewhere, and
allegedly sent funds collected from the earnings of the Tirana group abroad.71

In July 1998, Albanian and U.S. agents made their move. In
all, five alleged militants were captured, and one was killed in a shoot-out
with Albanian security. The four captured militants, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid
al-Naggar, Shawqi Salama Mustafa, Muhammad Hassan Mahmud Tita, and Ahmad
Isma`il `Uthman, were questioned by U.S. agents and then handed over to Egypts SSI.72 In
the same month, the CIA reportedly also rendered a fifth suspect, `Issam `Abd
al-Tawab `Abd al-Alim, from the Bulgarian capital Sofia to Cairo.73 Two of the
rendered suspects, `Uthman and al-Naggar, had previously been sentenced to
death in absentia by Egyptian military tribunals in March 1994 and
October 1997 respectively.

Once the five men were returned to Egypt, they were all kept incommunicado, away from other Islamists then being tried. These guys
[the returnees from Albania] were kept in villas, the ghost villas, we called
them, said Zayyat.74
All were held for an extended period in incommunicado detention before the
trial, without access to their attorneys or to family members. We saw them at
trial, said EOHRs Hafez Abu Saeda, who defended some of the returnees. We
were not allowed to see them before that.75

The trial, featuring 107 defendants, sixty of whom were
tried in absentia, began on February 2, 1999. In court, the five returnees showed no visible signs of torture or ill-treatment. Despite the lack of
physical marks on the men once they arrived in court, their defense lawyers
insisted that they had been abused. They told us in court that they had been
tortured and that their statements were coerced. But the court did nothing
about this, Abu Saeda said.76
Muntassir al-Zayyat, who also worked on the case, said that his client, Ahmad
Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar, told me that he was tortured inside one of these
villas.77

Some of the returnees owed their very appearance in court to
the discovery that they were being held in villas outside Cairo. According to al-Zayyat:

Al-Naggar was in that villa for nine months, [even] while
the case was going on. Then the news leaked that he was here, and some of the
other defendants bumped into him at the State Security Bureau.78

All five of the Albania returnees were tortured, according
to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. Al-Naggar was blindfolded for
much of his detention period. At one point during his detention, SSI officials
locked him in a room with dirty water up to his knees for twenty-four hours.
During his stay in SSI headquarters in Lazughli Square, al-Naggar was tortured
during interrogation. His hands were tied behind his back and his feet were
shackled as security agents applied electric shocks to different parts of his
body. Al-Naggar told his lawyers that his confessions were torture-induced.79 The court
did not order an investigation into the allegations of torture, and sentenced al-Naggar
to twenty-five years in prison.

Ahmad Isma`il `Uthman was returned from Albania a month later than the others, on August 13, 1998. According to the EOHR, during two months
in incommunicado detention, he was both beaten and subjected to electroshock
during interrogation by SSI agents.80

`Uthman and al-Naggar were executed on the morning of February 23, 2000, on the basis of their earlier convictions and death sentences by
military tribunals in 1994 and 1997.81

The London-based Islamic Observation Center, an organization
that tracks the treatment of suspected Islamist militants, reported that Shawqi
Salama Mustafa was held for several weeks in a room filled with water up to his
knees, and he was also subjected to electroshock during interrogation. His
interrogators tied his legs together and suspended him from the ceiling several
times, and also dragged him from room to room with his face to the floor. The
security forces also threatened to rape him during interrogation. Mustafa
received a twenty-five year sentence.82

`Issam `Abd al-Tawab `Abd al-Alim was held incommunicado
from July 13 to September 12, 1998. During his sixty-day detention, `Abd
al-Alim was allegedly beaten by his interrogators during questioning. He
received a fifteen-year sentence.83

Muhammad Hassan Mahmud Tita spent just under two months in
incommunicado detention, and finally appeared before the Prosecutor General in
mid-September. He told both the prosecutor and his lawyer that he was subjected
to electroshock on several parts of his body while being hung from the ceiling.
Tita was sentenced to ten years in prison.84

In all, 80 of the 107 were convicted, and nine were
sentenced to death in absentia. Among those handed death sentences in
absentia were Ayman al-Zawahri, his brother Muhammad, and `Abd al-`Aziz
Musa Dawud al-Gamal, who was among those transferred from Yemen in 2004 as part of the Egyptian-Yemeni swap for former Yemeni Brigadier General Ahmad Salim
`Ubaid.

[68] Muntassir al-Zayyat told Human Rights Watch that a
source in the Military Prosecutors office had confirmed this, but no
government official has done so publicly. Human Rights Watch interview, Cairo, Egypt, November 2004.